


It's Just You and Me, Kid

by keylimepie



Series: Charlotte 'Verse [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Background Poly, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gabriel and Kids, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Multi, Parenthood, Step-parents, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 22:32:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9207023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keylimepie/pseuds/keylimepie
Summary: Gabriel and Charlotte spend a day together in the bunker, and Gabe gets a little more used to this stepdad gig.*part of a series, though I think it may stand alone okay if you're just here for a fluffy one-shot*





	

Melanie hoisted her backpack onto her shoulder and hurried down the hallway of the bunker after Sam. “Don’t forget, she needs a bath tonight,” she said over her shoulder to Gabriel, who was trailing behind. “She’ll insist that she does not. No ice cream until she does though.” The five year old girl in Gabriel’s arms let out a disappointed whine. 

“Relax, Mel. I’ve got this,” Gabriel sighed, patting Charlotte’s back soothingly. 

“I know. I know, honey. I have faith in you. Really. It’s just… I’ve been doing this longer.” She paused at the foot of the stairs and pulled Gabriel into a kiss, lingering just long enough for Charlotte to make an exasperated noise. Melanie chuckled and swooped the kid into her arms and snuggled her close, nuzzling the top of her head. Sam took this opportunity to stoop down and kiss Gabriel, twining a finger in a lock of the archangel’s golden hair. Melanie grinned at them over the top of her daughter’s head. 

Another round of hugs and kisses, and they were finally ready to part ways. Melanie and Sam hurried up the stairs, knowing that Dean and Castiel were waiting for them several hours’ drive away. The hunt that they were on had become more complicated, and they had called for backup. It was decided that Sam and Melanie would be ideal for the investigations that needed to be done, and that left Gabriel to stay home and care for Charlotte. 

The moment the bunker door clanged shut, Charlotte tugged on Gabriel’s hand. “Come on! Ice cream time!” she shouted gleefully. 

“Whoa whoa whoa. Did you hear your mother?” He crossed his arms. 

She looked up at him in shock. “But she can’t see.” 

“I promised,” he said firmly. “Come on, let’s go brush Pumpkin. That’s on our list.” 

Charlotte’s nose wrinkled. “We have a list?” 

“You know the chore list.” 

“Yeah, but…” 

“Look, Cupcake, it’s up to us to keep order around here. Things need to get done. Maaaaybe we’ll cut corners a little… but you love brushing the kitty. So let’s go brush the kitty.” 

Pumpkin, the fat, fuzzy orange feline was sleeping on Charlotte’s bed. Due to his size and the length of his fur, brushing him weekly was a must, lest he develop matted patches on his back where he could not reach. Charlotte ran the brush across the cat, earning a slit-eyed stare. She sang to him as she worked, a lilting made-up song about furry furry orange furs and pink noses and toe beans, jelly jellybean toes. Gabriel dutifully gathered all the piles and tufts of loose fur as she brushed, and when she was finished, he waved his hands in a circle and suddenly the fur was a neatly crocheted orange square. 

“Start a collection. Make a Pumpkin quilt,” he said, handing the square to her. Charlotte stared at it dubiously, then placed it ceremonially upon the cat’s head. 

The next chore on the list was cleaning up the games table in the library. Charlotte had claimed a corner of the library as her own and was supplied with a table and a bookcase for her use. She had a large collection of board games and puzzles, as well as shelves of books. This area tended to become hopelessly messy very quickly, though Melanie usually guided the child through putting everything away a few times a week. 

“I don’t want to,” Charlotte insisted. “I don’t like cleaning. I want to play,” she shifted into whining. 

Gabriel sighed. “We don’t have enough room to play until we clean, though,” he attempted to reason. “I’m sorry, but we’re not playing anything until we do this.” He sat on the floor and started sorting puzzle pieces from the heap under the table. 

“You never make me do stupid things! We’re supposed to have fun!” she shrieked. 

“Lottie… Sugar Pie, come on, don’t…” 

"You’re just like them!” she exclaimed with venom, narrowing her eyes at the archangel. 

“Them?” he repeated in utter bewilderment. 

“My parents.” 

Gabriel laughed. “Well yeah, I mean, hello, stepdad, it goes with the territory,” he said. “It’s my job, kiddo.” 

“But you don’t be like them. You be like Gabe, and play with me, and make me ice cream and candy, and let me walk on the roof and take me flying—“ 

“Hey, we agreed never to talk about that.” Gabriel looked around nervously in spite of his certainty that all the other adults were out. “Look, Lottie, I’m sorry that I have been kinda slacking on all that stuff that I should have been helping out with. Just because I haven’t been the one sitting here on the floor sorting pieces with you, it doesn’t mean that I don’t think you need to do it. You’re a human child and there are certain things that you’ll need to learn to get through life. And we’ve all got to help you with those. I can’t always be there to snap my fingers and make it all neat.” He smoothed her hair back gently. 

“Just teach me how to do that like you,” she said, crawling into his lap and nuzzling under his chin. 

“Oh, Babykins, if I could,” he sighed sadly, tightening his arms around her. “I can’t make you an angel though. You’re not a fledgling; you’re a human girl. In spite of your… interest in flying.” 

Charlotte sighed and started to pick up Go Fish cards and stick them back into the box. She leaned sideways and squirmed off Gabriel’s lap as she gathered cards, until only her feet remained hooked around his knee. Gabriel grinned mischievously and tickled the sole of one bare little foot, causing the child to burst into giggles and flail wildly at him. She wiggled free and twisted around and retaliated by jamming her little fingers into his armpits and tickling him, to Gabriel’s utter surprise. To his further surprise, he discovered that he was in fact ticklish. He laughed until he was breathless, as the child was a merciless tickler and didn’t stop for several minutes and he didn’t do anything to stop her. But she did finally back away with a triumphant grin. “Gotcha!” she said. 

“You sure did, Princess. I don’t think anyone has ever tickled me before.” 

Their next task was laundry. That fell mostly on Gabriel, though Charlotte helped by dragging out the basket full of her clothes into the hallway. Gabriel looked at the basket of clothes and considered the laundry room in the basement, the tedious hours of loading clothes into machines, checking on them, folding them. He rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers and they were looking at a basket of clean, neatly folded clothing. “Yay!” she exclaimed, dragging the basket back into her room. “Hey, how about dinner?” Gabriel said suddenly. “It’s about that time, isn’t it?” 

“Tuna fish sandwich?” she asked. “And noodle soup, NOT CHICKEN just noodles.” 

“Sure thing, Sweetness.” They went to the kitchen and Gabriel went through the motions of making the food the human way. Charlotte sat on the stool and watched the whole process with fascination. When Gabriel drained the tuna can, Charlotte grabbed the bowl of tuna juice and went to find Pumpkin with the offering. 

They sat down to the meal. Gabriel wasn’t sure if he’d ever tried a tuna fish sandwich at any point in his existence. It was a strange experience, but he kept up a neutral face for the kid. He dutifully picked all the chicken pieces out of Charlotte’s bowl, just as Melanie had done for her the day she made the soup. “You’ve gotta eat the vegetables though,” he said. 

“No problem,” Charlotte agreed easily, digging through her soup for the chunks of soft, sweet carrot. “Then ice cream?” 

“Bath,” Gabriel reminded her. 

“Son of a bitch. I hoped you’d forget about that.” 

Gabriel quirked an eyebrow at her. “I’m an archangel. I don’t forget things. Especially not when your mother gives me clear instructions while wearing her serious face and her ‘don’t disappoint me, Gabriel’ eyes.” 

“I didn’t even know she had those,” Charlotte marveled. 

The bathtub was an antique cast iron clawfoot monstrosity, acquired at a salvage yard and installed in the bathroom for Charlotte’s convenience, though Dean was especially fond of a nice relaxing bubble bath now that the opportunity existed. 

Bathtime was a messy and drawn out process. Gabriel sat on the floor in swim trunks while she explained to him the role of each rubber duck in the complicated drama that she was staging on the water. It got rather splashy towards the part when all the ducks were mad at each other. By the time the ducks came to a resolution and made up, Gabriel was sitting in a sizable puddle, his hair was plastered to his head, and rivers of water ran down his chest. 

When at last Charlotte was out of the bath, dressed in pj’s, and Gabriel was back into dry clothes as well, they scurried to the kitchen gleefully for ice cream time. 

“Well, we have cherry chocolate and chip and mint in here,” he said, surveying the freezer. “But you know we’re not limited by that, of course.” 

“What if it had bananas and chocolate saucey swoops through it and some chocolate chips and cookie dough and Oreos?” she suggested. 

Gabriel looked impressed. “I like your style, kid,” he said, snapping his fingers. Two large bowls with Charlotte’s ice cream creation were in front of them. They dug in gleefully. 

“My compliments to the design team,” Gabriel said, brandishing his final spoon. “We’ll have to do this one again.” 

“How do you do it?” she asked, putting her spoon down. “I know you say I can’t. I can’t be magical. But I just wanna know… what do you do?” She looked up at him, her green eyes full of curiosity. Gabriel sighed. 

“I don’t even know how to tell you what it is I do. You don’t… I mean, you know this isn’t really what I look like, right?” She nodded. “I’m made of very different stuff than you are. Some of that stuff can do things… draw things together in a certain way. It’s a little like putting a puzzle together. Out of billions of tiny scattered pieces. That I just sort of… draw together.” 

Charlotte nodded again. “I get it,” she assured him. “It’s okay. I’ll just keep trying.” Gabriel laughed. 

“Right now, how about we go brush our teeth.” He escorted her to the bathroom, waited while she scrubbed her teeth for the requisite 2 minutes with bubblegum toothpaste, held her hair back while she spit, and wiped her face with a towel, grinning as she giggled and made funny faces behind it. 

He looked at that little face, the full-body giggles, the sparkly little soul shining around the edges of the pint-sized human body, and he realized with a start how much he loved that little creature. Beyond the love of humanity, of family, of the two who had formed her, he loved that precious and wild thing entirely upon her own merits, and he felt the weight and the honor that Sam and Melanie had bestowed upon him by including him in the parental circle. He scooped her up into his arms and “let’s get you to bed, baby girl,” was all he said, though his throat felt a bit more scratchy than any archangel’s had a right to be, and he sniffled a little. 

Gabriel tucked Charlotte into the bed and then stretched out beside her and told her stories. He never needed a book to tell compelling bedtime stories, and Charlotte listened in fascination until her eyelids drooped and she started to snore softly. Gabriel stayed there, curled up next to the sleeping child, and indulged in a rare moment of sleep, treading lightly in her dreams to keep them free from strife. 


End file.
